Category: Religion

Yes, I’m joking about the game of Clue, and what looks like the murder of America.

I suppose I should feel worse, but … I already think civilization is coming to an end. I thought it would be in about 2030, but it looks like things are speeding up. One wonders if those women who ask the police for protection from abusive husbands feel one small moment of satisfaction — “See? I TOLD them he’d come here and kill me!” — in their last terrified minutes.

I’ve already seen people blaming this on Hillary, but I don’t. Hillary was a fantastic candidate suffering from too many lies and smears. She was America’s pit bull puppy, languishing in the animal shelter not for anything she’d done, but because of idiot public perception.

Thank you, Mrs. Clinton, for taking this on. I’m sorry WE let YOU down, and I wish you all the best in the future. Ditto to President Obama and his family in the coming years.

The real blame lies on those people who voted for Donald Trump. Not Hillary, not Democrats, not anything or anybody else. (And I kinda don’t even blame them. They’re reacting pretty much as I expect.)

With two small exceptions.

Bear in mind that I voted for Ralph Nader back in 2000. I defended that choice for years, but I finally realized I — and a lot of people like me — really had handed the White House to that little weasel George W. Bush — whom I have described as “a 110-volt man in a 220-volt office,” and “just about bright enough to run a tire store.” (I don’t think even that highly of Trump.)

But to all those people who voted for Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, yes, thank you for adding the phrase “President Donald Trump” to the national dialogue. Donald is YOUR president, YOUR accomplishment, and I hope you’ll be happy with what you’ve done.

And the news media. You failed us, you miserable bastards. You can’t ever get back the respect and trust you threw away, and oh-my-god, now what?

With Donald in the White House, and a GOP-controlled Congress, we can look for a lot more fracking and fracking side-effects. No action on climate change. The final victory of corporatism over democracy. The faster and further loss of esteem from the rest of the world. An end to public lands, and science education.

A conservative Supreme Court will mean saying bye-bye to same-sex marriage, to women’s reproductive rights, to ObamaCare and maybe even Social Security and Medicare. Not to mention an end to separation of church and state, and probably all pretense of democracy. —But at least we’ll all have plenty of guns, right?

I’m expecting a slow-rolling wave of shock over the next four years, as Trump voters — some of them, not all — realize what they’ve done, and what it’s doing to us. Right now, they must be celebrating big-time (I’m already seeing some crowing from the Jesusians), and I wish them the best during this brief moment of victory.

OWN this moment, Trumpsters. But also own everything that comes after. I don’t think it’s going to be anything like what you wanted, but you bought it. Now you get to unwrap this bitch and try to figure out where the batteries go and how the thing works.

Elsewhere: I’m imagining a great deal of fear right now in the LBGT community, among American Muslims, possibly among Latinos, and probably even among seniors.

To the limits of my poor ability, I’ve got your back. We all have a common enemy — not Trump, but the stupidity behind him, the willful ignorance that made him president — and I like to think we’ll face it together.

( BTW: According to Wikipedia, “A shofar is an ancient musical horn made of ram’s horn, used for Jewish religious purposes.” —Hey, if I want some musical instrument played in The Nation’s Capital, I want a CHRISTIAN instrument, possibly a pedal steel guitar borrowed from a smoke-and-beer-smelling honky tonk, or a red-white-and-blue banjo made from the casing of an unexploded artillery shell. Not some nancy Jewish instrument made from a ram’s horn that nobody even knows how to play a tune on. /snark )

The event itself is this:

Nov. 6, 7 and 8—three nights leading up to the most important presidential election since the Civil War, concerned citizens will be gathering at the Upper Senate Park across Constitution Avenue from the U.S. Capitol to pray for the election and the nation’s future.

The rationale for the event is this:

The organizers believe that prayer, not politics, is the only hope and answer to America’s problems. “Where people are praying, there is hope. When people pray things happen,” says Pastor Dan Cummins, an associate pastor of Skyline Wesleyan Church in San Diego, California, and the onsite pastor of The Jefferson Gathering Worship Services which are held weekly in the nation’s Capitol building for members of Congress, staff and all federal employees.

There’s the 180-degrees thing.”When people pray things happen.” From seeing to the medical needs of children to having some real effect on the larger world through hands-on action, this is the exact opposite of the truth.

But, hey:

“Skyline Church is involved because we understand that America is in a crisis moment. The nation—as we know it—is gasping for air. This is neither melodramatic nor defeatist. It is simply fact,” says Dr. Jim Garlow, senior pastor of Skyline Church in San Diego and oversite pastor of the Jefferson Gathering. “The kingdom of God will be fine—with or without America. But America may not survive. We pray for voters to enter the voting booth with a healthy reverence of God, casting a ballot for biblical concepts and principles.”

Wait, that wasn’t a shofar. Sounded more like a conservative dog whistle.

Though the event is advertised as “non-partisan” the focus of its prayers will be for the nation and the election. Organizers believe that it was upon the influence of Judeo-Christian ethics that America was founded. They hope that this election will be influential in bringing the nation back to its core values.

Let’s see. Careful denial of partisanship. But then “bringing the nation back to its core values.” Yeah, that does sound dog-whistley. And ooh, there’s that clever mention of “the most important presidential election since the Civil War.” And sure, I guess we have gotten far away from those “core values,” what with this NEGRO in office, and this WOMAN poised to continue his anti-American policies.

“There is a steady undercurrent of targeted efforts to remove God from every vestige of American life and culture. These battles confirm a tangible reality that the things we hold sacred are slowly eroding away all around us,” says Lea Carawan, president and executive director of the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation. “Thankfully, God’s people are unifying with one heart and one voice in prayer for the country and those who lead her. God has been and always will be our only source of hope.”

The focus of evening prayers will span from the White House to every house in America. The Supreme Court nominees and the judicial system will be a center of focus.

A constant for those of us on the left is our “rage against the machine” vibe. When it comes to the power of government or the rights of the individual, we’re totally tuned in to those individual rights.

When a story floats across our attention about a kid sent home from school for wearing “inappropriate clothing” — a provocative blouse, for instance, or a t-shirt with a comically dirty picture on it — we’re right there swinging, often screaming that the teacher should be fired, or the principal should be fired, for assaulting the fragile psyche of each of these embattled children.

Yet it’s rare for me to leap to spitting hate at teachers and school administrators when I hear these stories. For one thing, I feel strongly that the purpose of school is education, and everything else should come second. The deal is: You come to school and pay attention and we’ll hand you the keys to life. But the deal is also: You’re required to act in such a way that you don’t distract the other kids trying to absorb those keys, and don’t make it harder for the teachers — who already have a damned difficult job — trying to impart them.

You have a RIGHT to education. But you have a DUTY to not interfere with others’ enjoyment of that right.

Too often, it seems to me, in our avid clamor for our rights in society, we miss the point that we also have these attached duties. We on the left forget that waaaay too often. We scream and leap rather than take a moment to think, deeply and thoroughly, about each issue as it arises.

One of the hazards of that sort of reaction is that we’re easily manipulated. On issue after issue, our knee-jerk scream reaction makes us easy marks for clever opponents. I watched this happen when I was a political activist: Developers in my small town would present this plan for a vast, elaborate development with all sorts of environment-destroying bells and whistles. We would predictably scream and leap, writing letters to the paper, speaking up angrily in city council meetings, drawing up petitions for people to sign. And the developer would back down! But he would back down to his real, original plan, which was to build condos in a delicate meadow and major viewshed area of the town.

If he’d proposed that real plan in the beginning, we would have worked against that, and maybe blocked the development entirely. But because he tossed out the equivalent of radar-foiling chaff, we saw only the chaff and missed the bombers coming through. At the end, we sighed with pride at our efforts. Sure the condos got built in that delicate meadow but, by god, we stopped him from building the touristy blacksmith shop along that one delicate creek.

I saw it time after time, enough to finally realize that the developers KNEW US. They knew what we’d do. We’d go for the red cape — EVERY TIME — and miss the fact that there was a bullfighter behind it with a killing sword.

I came to understand there was something like a bull session where the developer would get his whole crew in and say “Okay, kids, here’s the plan. Now let’s add on some bait for the idiots, stuff we know they’ll hate, so they can fight that while we get the main project approved. Come on, what can we put in here? Let’s have some ideas, the goofier the better!”

We won and won and won the small battles, but lost and lost and lost the big ones.

We on the left are suckers for an obvious pitch. Time after time, we’ll leap for the shiny lure and miss the fact that there’s a fisherman on the other end of the line.

So: France.

They’ve been catching holy hell for the recent ban on burkinis on some French beaches, which was even more recently overturned. The online community practically burned up the Internet with outrage at that hideous transgression onto individual liberty and the misogynistic assault on women. FRENCH POLICE FORCE WOMAN TO REMOVE BURKINI!!!

Meanwhile, over in that bastion of women’s rights (and Islam), Saudi Arabia, women are forbidden to drive cars, or try on clothing in stores. Forbidden to wear body-defining clothing or makeup that “enhances beauty.” Forbidden to open a bank account without their husband’s permission. Forbidden to go for a swim, compete in sports, or interact with men while out and about. FORBIDDEN TO APPEAR IN PUBLIC WITHOUT A MALE ESCORT.

So you’d expect an equal or greater amount of outrage over all that, right? I mean, considering the horrified reaction with France? Because, hey, talk about assaults on individual liberty and pure-dee misogyny!

I mean, dayyum — Saudi women LIVE UNDER HOUSE ARREST for their entire lives. Just because they’re women.

Our reaction? … Crickets.

To be fair, I’ve seen plenty of stories in the atheist community about Islam-the-religion. We oppose it as avidly as we oppose Christianity. But when it comes to Islamic culture, which contains Islam-the-religion as an inseparable foundational element, we seem fairly blind to it. Too many of us have even adopted the word “Islamophobia” — which seems to be defined as “blind hatred for poor, innocent Muslims” — and used it to flail at everyone in sight, passionately defending both Muslims and Islam with the same cannonade.

Something we’re almost not permitted to say on the Left is that some cultures are superior to others. Considering its treatment and subjugation of women, I consider Islam — as practiced in predominantly Islamic countries — to be an inferior culture. Anyplace that forces women to walk around in burkhas, to cover themselves head to foot, aside from anything else, that’s UGLY. Any country or culture that confines women (hell, anybody!) to their homes — with the right to leave dependent on having a MAN, and only a close relative at that — is a culture that should not qualify as even minimally acceptable to the modern world.

Yes, I’m sure there are plenty of women there who are happy with their burkhas (cough*StockholmSyndrome*cough), who would defend to the death the wearing of the burkha. But in my view, some things are an offense against freedom and equality themselves, against womanhood itself. The burkha is one of those things.

In France, it’s currently estimated that 5 to 10 percent of French residents are now Muslims, with a full 25 percent of French teens being Islamic. The Muslim population is growing, and most French citizens can clearly see the coming radical demographic and cultural shift.

If you focus only on the rights of poor, embattled women to wear burkinis on the beach, you’d have to conclude the French are horrible and hateful and even racist. The idea! Sending armed thugs to force a poor little woman to remove her burkini! My god, what is the world coming to?

But if you see the bigger picture of an invasive — and inferior — culture using such controversies as manipulative bait to win more and more of the cultural ground, things look a bit different.

In that bigger picture, France is trying to preserve French culture.

Do they have that right? I mean, if it means this poor, poor woman has to face public humiliation?

I have to say they do. Hell, I think they have the DUTY to push back with everything they’ve got.

Not because they want to hurt this one innocent woman, but because they want to protect the rights of ALL French women, the freedom of ALL women to move confidently and freely through the cities and towns of France, indefinitely into the future, against a real trend toward Islamic majority that would — will! — diminish those rights and freedoms.

The lure to gain our knee-jerk reaction of sympathy and support is the picture of this one poor woman. Thanks to us, Islam wins another public relations battle.

But meanwhile, something hidden, something bigger, goes on.

—————————————-

Postscript 1: Oh, that brutal murder of the Charlie Hebdo staff by an Islamist? No, no, that was one lone individual. A total aberration. Islam is the Religion of Peace™.

Postscript 2: Aside from individual rights, the Koran is pretty clear that alcohol is satanic. What happens to the French wine industry — third largest in the world — when Islam becomes the dominant culture? Hey, probably they’ll just switch over to Prophet Muhammad Wine, right? Riiiight.

There was a shooting in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, last night. Described as the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, the 3-hour-long incident left 50 people dead, more than that hospitalized.

The shooter has been identified as Omar Saddiqui Mateen.

Interesting thing in the tone of most of the early articles I read on the incident: People were LEAPING to declare the shooting had absolutely no connection to Islam, the Religion of Peace™. The fact that some of us were frantic to absolve Islam, even before the facts were known, is telling.

My initial cynical estimation was that we’d come out of all this even more firmly convinced as a nation that Islam is this fluffy, friendly personal philosophy totally compatible with American values and lifestyle, and which can in no way encourage or promote violence.

But let’s call a spade a spade, okay? We atheists are free at talking about the societal dangers of Christianity. Let’s be equally free at admitting that Islam is AT LEAST that dangerous.

The gunman, identified as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, made a 911 call before the attack identifying himself and declared allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State, according to U.S. law enforcement officials who asked not to be identified to discuss the ongoing investigation. Mateen, whose family is from Afghanistan, also cited the 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon during that call.

For myself, I view Islam as a threat to civilization itself. It poses a clear and present danger to human safety, freedom and dignity. I cannot see anything graceful or good in it.

According to TheReligionofPeace.com, so far in 2016, there have been 1,035 Islamic attacks in 48 countries, in which 9,776 people were killed and 11,920 injured.

In 2015, there were 2,865 Islamic attacks in 53 countries, in which 27,626 people were killed and 26,149 injured.

Yeah, let’s all be generous, compassionate liberals, and understand that most Muslims no more want these things to happen than we do. Let’s also realize there are a number of issues involved, among them 1) continuing irrational hatred of gays and 2) too-easy access to automatic weapons.

But let’s not kid ourselves about this other issue — in this case, in the shooter’s own words, the central issue — Islam.

How many typed “amen”? I didn’t go through and inspect every single response, but in the looking I did do — the most recent several hundred responses — every person typed “amen” or something even more goddy.

As of 9:45 p.m. today, the post got 125,177 comments, 310,000 likes, and almost 13,000 shares.

Oh, and Donald Trump just won the primaries in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. It wasn’t even close.

Gah.

On the plus side, I think Hillary is going to crush him. The comedic dynamic of the GOP primary is that the “joke” candidate is kicking the asses of the “serious” candidates. The GOP built this monster, and if he runs amuck and destroys the whole party — while they tear out their hair and scream to the heavens “What have I done!!?” — that’s fine with me.

But still … that he’s getting votes at all is a testament to the utter gullibility of some of you Earth people.

Hey, come to think of it, that light in the clouds looks a lot like Donald Trump! Someone alert Fox News!

Some of them are ways of viewing the world or the people around us – You’re Wrong About Everything, Barack Obama Wants to Take Our Guns, Everything Will Be Okay Because I Have Jesus, The Bilderbergers Run The World, GMOs are Totally Safe and Anybody Who Doesn’t Think So is a Hateful Luddite, All Men Are Just Waiting For Their Chance to Rape and Abuse Women.

It’s this second one, the bit about ways of viewing the world, I kinda want to talk about.

As a writer myself, I know how to write a story and make it interesting. You’ve got these conceptual elements, or this idea, and you turn it into a story. You emphasize certain parts, leave other parts out. You create a narrative, and carve out everything that doesn’t fit. You embellish it, you add tweaks, to make it interesting. Not true, but interesting. More than informing your chosen audience, your goal is to attract and hold their attention. (Ha. Suddenly FOX News comes to mind.)

You fictionalize deliberately in order to capture interest.

In entertainment-type storifying, you do it for that simple reason: to entertain. But other types of storifying have much less innocent aims.

Storifying is yet another of the things that bothers me about religion. Religion is harmful not just because it’s factually false, it’s harmful because it causes you to accept its STORY. Worse, it conditions you to accept not just its own story, but stories themselves.

And here’s the thing: If I tell you certain things and say they are facts, you may or may not accept that those things are facts. You can reject or critique those items. You might be moved to do your own research to find out if they really are facts.

But if I tell you a STORY and get you to accept it, you will thereafter reject or accept additional information ALL BY YOURSELF — depending on whether or not it fits the story. In other words, you yourself become a defender and supporter of that story and all that goes with it.

You can be presented with information which is verifiably factual, and yet reject it because it doesn’t fit the story. You can discover other information which is easily proven false, and yet accept it because it does fit the story. Once you buy into the story, nobody has to argue to convince you of additional parts of the story – you yourself will include and exclude the facts that fit or don’t fit.

You will reject things, ignore things, that fly in the face of the story. You will step totally outside real reality, which is lumpy and uncertain and chock full of facts that don’t fit, and you will cleave to the story.

Jesus wasn’t born in the middle of winter? Doesn’t matter. No way Noah could have gotten two of every species on the ark? Ain’t important. Geology proves the Earth is billions of years old? Says who?

The Bible is not just dangerous because of false facts, it’s dangerous because it turns the entire universe into this story. And such stories are seductive not just because they’re entertaining and, perhaps, internally consistent (which reality may not always appear to be), but because they’re easy to swallow and understand. And once you accept a story, you can feel like you’re there, you understand, you KNOW.

Because I write, because I’m familiar with the storifying process, I’m probably more aware of stories than the general public. But only recently have I started to understand the hazard. This is DANGEROUS, kids, because it turns you into a permanent ally of people who have a vested interest in lying to you, in manipulating you. Once you get caught by their story, you’re an unwitting team member, pretty much forever.

Because anybody can tell you a story. They may not even know they’re making up a story. And you certainly may not realize you’ve accepted it. But if you buy into it, you’re trapped. You have to accept everything presented to you that fits the story, and you have to reject everything presented to you that does not fit the story.

Is Barack Obama a secret Muslim? Oh yeah. Which means he wants to destroy America. Which means EVERYTHING he does must be inspected for its hateful real purpose.

Is Hillary Clinton a manipulative, murderous bitch? Well, of course. That decency and compassion stuff is all just an act, and the part where she looks presidential, it’s a viciously deceitful pose. Every smile and laugh, every expression of calm confidence, is a poisonous trick.

Is there a “liberal media” that’s out to get all the GOP candidates? Absolutely. Which means every question is a sly attack, meant to destroy this panel of good, honest, Christian men who would all make perfect presidents. Have they made Sarah Palin look like an utter fool? That must mean she’s an intelligent, poised statesman, a rich well of wisdom from which every American could benefit.

Is Al Gore a tool of the secret cabal that wants to enslave and disenfranchise us all? Well, sure he is. Therefore global warming has to be an utter hoax.

But also: Are all men vicious rapists, just waiting the chance to brutalize women? Yes, this is known. Therefore, any man who argues with a feminist about any issue whatsoever does it because he’s a mansplaining hater of women who supports Rape Culture and the Patriarchy.

And also: Are all cops malignant racists, and every shooting of a black man is deliberate murder? Totally. Therefore, all black men shot by cops are harmless victims who cannot possibly have done anything wrong. (And don’t you fucking dare accuse me of not knowing about real racism.)

And again also: Are all homeless people simple honest victims of a bad economy? Yep. Therefore ANY attempt by a city to keep homeless people from congregating in city parks, or sleeping in apartment entryways is a hateful attack on the innocent.

Speaking of my own experience, I’ve had countless run-ins with people who are so caught up in the story of GMOs that they’re willing to say that nobody should be allowed to even know if a food contains genetically modified ingredients, that consumers MUST NOT be given the choice, because otherwise children elsewhere in the world will starve and go blind. And these are people who consider themselves staunch advocates of science and reason. Yes, I know there’s more to the subject. But this STORY keeps them from being able to admit there are rational views on the subject that might simultaneously be critical of GMOs, or pro-labeling, and yet not be coming from hateful screaming-insane luddites.

Every movement that storifies is guilty of trafficking in the same sort of dangerous socio-cultural acts as religion. Hell, we probably learned it from religion.

I know there’s a great deal more that could be said here. I sense that there’s a major field of study that someone smarter than me has already discovered and examined at length. But the idea that stories can be dangerous is new to me. And because of that, damned scary.

Because the real world is not a story. It isn’t even a collection of stories. It’s facts. Real-world phenomena. Data. All mixed up in a confusing, ultra-complex mess that can be bewilderingly deep, scarily unpredictable.

Surfing reality’s swirling patterns is a job for a rational being, not a consumer of stories. For every story you buy into, you become that much less capable of understanding the world around you, that much less able to be a free and independent thinker.

For every story you reject, you become that much more able to see the array of facts hidden behind them, that much more able to reach trustworthy, accurate conclusions about how things really work.

I would want this to be one of the most basic teachings of Beta Culture – that stories exist, that they’re dangerous, and that you have to constantly work to recognize and steer clear of them in order to be a rational being.

Would you believe me if I told you “government” doesn’t really exist? That when we talk about government, there’s nothing really there? It’s as fictional as religion?

So where do I think all those government buildings come from? What’s all that business you see in Washington DC — Congress and the White House, the Supreme Court and all those museums and monuments and stuff? What’s the deal with all the cop cars, and the uniformed people driving them? What do I think the IRS is, or the U.S. Army? What exactly is the local fire department, the school district, the Water Board, the city and county office buildings? What about all that sheer government POWER??

It’s just this: People pretending — or agreeing — government exists.

Oh, the buildings are there, sure enough, but they’re really no different from other buildings. They’re things people build for some purpose. But the something-or-other inside them, that’s just a bunch of people playing an elaborate game of make-believe. The game of “Let’s Pretend Government Exists.” And the power?

Let me see if I can explain it.

Say John Smith wants Bob Jones to do something for him. There’s a range of persuasions that can be called into play to make this happen. At one end is the generosity and goodwill of Bob toward his friend John, and all John has to do is suggest he needs the thing done, and Bob will jump to do it. At the other end, John holds a gun to Bob’s head and orders him to do it.

In between is John the cop flashing his lights at Bob the driver, John the distant tax collection official and Bob the annual tax-return-filer, John the teacher announcing a pop quiz to Bob the student, John the storekeeper telling Bob the shopper the total will be $27.16, John the preacher telling Bob the parishioner to say ten Hail Marys.

But in each case, and all the cases between those two extremes, there’s a hidden agreement. Bob agrees that John has the power over him. He PERMITS it.

The agreement is “You pretend you’re a teacher, I’ll pretend you’re a teacher, and we’ll proceed as if that’s something real.” For human social reasons, it’s real. But in any other way, it’s a pretense.

Even if John is President of the United States, or a four-star general, he’s just one guy, right? And so is Bob. Discount for a second the fact that one of them might be physically stronger than the other, and you have one unit of human power facing one unit of human power. EVERYTHING ELSE is that agreement. Bob agrees that John has the right to tell him what to do. Bob agrees to do it.

He doesn’t have to. He can say no. You might say “Well, John might kill him for it,” and yes, that’s true. But how many civilized situations really involve the imminent threat of death? Very few.

But in reality, John has one unit of human power, and only one … until Bob AGREES that he will lend John his power by doing what John wants.

Toss some other people into the mix. Say John is a four-star general. Surround him with a thousand obedient soldiers. In addition to his own single unit of human power, now John has the power of a thousand soldiers, plus the power of Bob. But only so long as the thousand-and-one people AGREE they will obey John. Only as long as they willingly PERMIT the general to have that power over them.

Fame is a sort of power. So is wealth. Every aspect of human social and political power is this same sort of thing. Put a billionaire — or a rock star, the leader of a country, a military dictator, any sort of powerful person you might imagine — into a huge empty stadium by himself, and he will again have only one unit of human power. This is why “powerful” people MUST be constantly surrounded by legions of sycophants — servants, toadies, secretaries, guards, henchmen, flower girls and all the rest.

Power in the human sphere comes only by the agreement of the people in the sociopolitical structure within which the power displays.

The democratic model of government is fairly open about this. In nations where political office depends on voters, there’s a recognition that “the people” are the ultimate deciders as to who has power and who doesn’t.

Every “rise to power” — think political campaigns, but also the rise of Hitler — occurs along a lengthy road on which the people being powered-over become gradually convinced, one by one, that they’re willing to cede their own power to the leader. They PERMIT the leader to become powerful by agreeing that he is powerful, and by acting, or refraining from acting, according to the leader’s wishes.

A totalitarian government works no differently as far as the source of power, but it conceals from the underlings any suggestion that their leader — or tyrant — is anything but massively more powerful than them. Yet his power comes only through consent of the henchmen and carriers-out-of-orders, and the fearful-but-willing acquiescence of the populace. You can scare people into fearful obedience, and it works for exactly as long as you can keep them scared.

No one enjoys being afraid, though. It’s why we came up with the democratic social model in which leaders are chosen by the people, each with his one vote which says “Yes, I’ll pretend you have the right to tell me what to do, and I’ll allow you to pretend to lead me.”

But in this social model, just how much “right to tell me what to do” do we give away? To answer that, we first have to realize that in the democratic model, the “leader” position exists not for the purpose of ruling over people, but for doing certain larger social work the individual knows needs to be done, but is unable to do, or chooses not to do, himself. The “ruling over” part of it exists ONLY in the pursuit of that larger work.

So here I am, John Q. Public, and I’m lending out some power to a police officer. How much do I lend him? Exactly the amount needed to do the job of keeping the peace and enforcing the necessary regulations. No more.

If you picture power as gasoline, and imagine a cop needs 13 gallons to do his job each day, we-the-public would provide him 13 gallons, possibly a touch more for unforeseen circumstances. But no more. We wouldn’t give him 38 gallons, or 70 gallons.

So a police officer does NOT have any extra power outside the bounds of his job. And even in his job, there are limits.

We don’t give him permission to beat his wife, for instance, to intimidate his kid’s schoolteacher into giving all A’s, or to beat down some guy he takes a dislike to in an after-hours bar disagreement. All of those are clearly abuses of power, and we cut it off as soon as we find out about it. If the driver in a traffic stop gives him lip, we don’t agree that he can shoot the guy 36 times, killing him.

There’s some inevitable slop. You and I don’t have free rein to drive 90 miles per hour on the highway, but we somewhat grudgingly allow cops to do it. Not to race to get donuts, or to pick up his laundry before the cleaners closes, but to attend to NECESSARY duties which we assume he’s doing. As we don’t know what he’s doing, though, he’s free to skate over the line at least a little bit for his own purposes.

It’s this “skating over the line” I really want to talk about, though.

The job of policing, tax collecting, being a Congressman, operating a toll booth, all require a certain amount of lent power to accomplish the official duties. We lend exactly the amount necessary, and not one jot more.

A police car is a bit of borrowed power. We might agree that a police officer could need to take his patrol car home with him, but we’d end his power to drive it after he gets home. If he leaves home for a shopping trip, or to take his daughter to a Little League game, we’d expect him to take his own car. Taking his patrol car would be a clear abuse of his borrowed power.

One of the consequences of such actions, if we assume power lent to do a job comes in limited amounts, is that every bit of power diverted to private goals makes the person less able to do his job. There just isn’t enough power.

There are two main points here.

One is that borrowed power has limits, the limit in each case being the boundary of permission of those lending the power. We all of us lend out our power for officials to do their jobs, but we lend out EXACTLY the amount of power to do the job, and no more.

So every official who uses the power of his position to accomplish his own private goals or feather his own nest is not only abusing the power of his office, he is also making himself less able to do his job. Just as if he used 5 gallons of provided gasoline to run his own private errands, he’d be 5 gallons down on the amount needed to perform his duties.

Second is that the power can be taken back. We can do it through the voting process, by removing the person from that office. Or we can do it ourselves by refusing to recognize the power of that one PERSON to order or rule us.

So what does all this have to do with day-to-day living? Not much, admittedly, under normal conditions.

I still think it’s important to keep in mind the situation, though, the origins and limits of power, in case you (we!) ever decide to make other choices about how much and to whom you’re lending it.

Power is purely a belief. There are no powerful people, except those we pretend are powerful.

Here’s a little idle exercise: Open up Google Maps, and put this word in the search window: “churches.”

Wait for it to do its thing, and you will see the map fill up with little red dots, like the worst case of chicken pox you ever saw.

Look at the lower right of the map for the scale, and zoom on your town to where the “one mile” is about an inch long. Zoom out to where that same scale says “five miles.” You’ll see that the entire countryside is … infected.

Zoom out a bit more, to where each inch represents “20 miles,” and think of each red dot as a parasite, feeding on some sort of prey. You’ll notice how they congregate thickly around cities and towns, but there’s never a part of the countryside that is completely without one nearby.

Now leave the map where it is, but change the search word to “schools.” The red dots diminish in number — not a lot, fortunately, but there are definitely fewer — and spread out more evenly across the map.

A few years back, I went into the Schenectady County tax assessor’s office and looked up churches and church-owned properties within a 2-mile radius of my house. In a town of about 60,000 people, there are CLOSE TO 80 of them. They cluster thickly in the city core, on some of the most valuable property around. Farther out, they occupy large tracts of land, like millionaire estates, with buildings that range from the industrial chic of recent years to soaring castlelike structures built with artisanal opulence rarely seen today.

Just sayin’.

I hope one day there will be at least ONE Beta Culture Nexus in each town, a friendly, empowering alternative to these parasitic temples of worship.